Teaching Adolescent Writers
(Page 49) “Unfortunately, many students continue year in and year out with the same mistaken notion that writing is easy for some and difficult for others.”
This is the same concept that students have about reading—they just think people are naturally good readers and don’t realize that good readers got that way because they read a lot. Just like our struggling readers need us to think aloud so they’ll know what should be going through their minds while they read, our students need to see us start writing from scratch, so they can see how it is developed from beginning to end.
Students seem to think the books they read are just churned out that way. They don’t realize how writers rewrite and edit their work tons of times before it goes to the publisher. With the leak of Midnight Sun on the Internet, author Stephenie Meyer urges fans not to read it not only because she wasn’t ready for it to be released, but also because “the writing is messy and flawed and full of mistakes.” The woman who has sold MILLIONS of copies of her book admits to her writing not being very good. (You knew I’d have to get a Twilight connection in there somehow!) So…we need to model, model, model for students, so that they’ll realize that a final product isn’t easy for anyone—it takes much time and effort!
Content Area Writing
(Page 49) “Unfortunately, many students continue year in and year out with the same mistaken notion that writing is easy for some and difficult for others.”
This is the same concept that students have about reading—they just think people are naturally good readers and don’t realize that good readers got that way because they read a lot. Just like our struggling readers need us to think aloud so they’ll know what should be going through their minds while they read, our students need to see us start writing from scratch, so they can see how it is developed from beginning to end.
Students seem to think the books they read are just churned out that way. They don’t realize how writers rewrite and edit their work tons of times before it goes to the publisher. With the leak of Midnight Sun on the Internet, author Stephenie Meyer urges fans not to read it not only because she wasn’t ready for it to be released, but also because “the writing is messy and flawed and full of mistakes.” The woman who has sold MILLIONS of copies of her book admits to her writing not being very good. (You knew I’d have to get a Twilight connection in there somehow!) So…we need to model, model, model for students, so that they’ll realize that a final product isn’t easy for anyone—it takes much time and effort!
Content Area Writing
The last three writing-to-learn strategies in this chapter seem to be geared for the visual learners. Every time I see stuff about using drawings for understanding, I always think about Jimmy Richardson sharing his students’ “sketch to stretch” drawings when they were studying different religions. I think only Christy and Claire were in his group two years ago when he shared it. My favorite was the student who drew Jesus rising up out of the tomb and someone else looking in it saying, “Yo, dog. He ain’t in there” for his depiction of Christianity. Funny stuff! Has anyone tried any of the strategies from Chapter 3? If so, share how it went!
13 comments:
As I write, I feel like a public service announcement: this is your brain/body on Twilight. I just finished Eclipse this morning (making my second almost sleepless night in a row). So, if nothing I write makes any sense, you know why.
“Telling the students what constitutes good writing is not enough. As apprentices, students must see the process in action… They don’t need a teacher who assigns writing; they need a teacher who demonstrates what good writers do. (Gallagher 48)”
One thing that often surprises me about learning in general is that moment when things click – and you find yourself wondering if you didn’t actually know that all along. How is it that the ah-ha moment feels like a new revelation and yet familiar, all at the same time? I guess it’s that the scaffolding and background knowledge that enable the comprehension are familiar, but the connection itself is new.
I am very much a learner who needs to do something to learn it. I make a lot of mistakes, which used to frustrate the crap out of me. But grad school taught me that I’d rather be outside making mistakes than sitting in that classroom discussing theory. And for that reason, I put a lot of emphasis on practicing with the language – writing, talking to partners, etc – in my class. But it rarely occurred to me that they needed to see me go through the process of completing the tasks, as well. In fact, I often shied away from that, hesitant that the students would simply regurgitate my writing back to me, changing the names and dates. In denying my students the opportunity to watch my thought process, I’m crippling them. I’m still at a loss as to what to do with the lazy students who would just copy my work, but it’s hardly fair to the majority of the students who would put their effort into their task. Imagine if my cooperating teacher had said, “Nicole, you’ve had two years of theory. I’m not going to let you observe me teach because I want you to develop your own style. I’ll be here if you have questions, but I really want to see what you know. Good luck.” It’s no wonder my students feel so frustrated!
Blog Due November 20, 2008
If anyone has used the WTL strategies in Chapter 3 Content Area Writing in their classrooms, please bring samples to class! I would love to see what writing your students are doing!
Light bulb moment from Chapter 3 in Teaching Adolescent Writers…. when I teach grant writing to interested Airport High School teachers next semester or summer, I need to reiterate that MANY, MANY revisions went into the final grant application (s). The Mid Carolina grant had word count restrictions for each required section. Many copy and pastes went into MS Word to actually count each word in each section before the final product was submitted. My two cents is that grant writing for teachers is like writing essays for high school students. It takes practice and many rewrites, but once that technical writing process is part of the educator’s mindset, the sky’s the limit when it comes to acquiring additional funding for innovative classroom projects!
Teaching Adolescent Writers Chapter Three
Content Area Writing (the rest of) Chapter Three
Once again, I’m glad to be rereading some of what I read last year because this week I was reminded of a few things. First of all in TAW, Pimp My Write with STAR is great. All the strategies for revision are. And I’m guessing all the English teachers especially like the 4:1 grading rule. I looked ahead and chapter seven is about assessing writing. It’s full of great ideas as well.
I am just as guilty this year of not modeling good writing for my students, and I think it’s because I don’t have enough time to plan. And I confess; it’s also because I can accomplish things while they’re writing. I am bombarded with so many things that take away both my planning period and time after school to plan --parent conferences, everything involved with LLC, grading papers, school committees, etc. I know I’m not the only one who feels that way. I do plan on having my students write next week, and I am determined to read my response to the prompt first.
As for the strategies in chapter three of CAW, I did have my students illustrate the word health after they had completed a quick write on what it means to be healthy. It was neat to see which students included images of mental-emotional health and family-social health instead of just physical health. It was interesting to see how kids who only gave me around the minimum 75-word requirement took great care in their illustrations. It also worked in reverse. Kids who wrote 200 words rushed through the drawing. (Y’all know that would have been me! I HATE to draw!)
Deb said...
Teaching Adolescent Writers: Chapter 3; Content Area Writing: The Rest of Chapter 3
This chapter emphasizes that teachers should model various credible writing strategies through their writing in order for the students to see first hand the strategies being used to make successful writing pieces. Students are more likely to develop as better writers themselves if we lead by example. This has motivated me to go beyond what I have been doing in teaching my students. I will take more of my writing pieces and model what steps I have taken to make an appropriate writing piece. This chapter provided me with new insights and suggested better ways to lead my class by example to become successful writers. I feel that this too will also build my confidence in becoming a better writer.
This chapter provided me with mini-lessons that I can use to introduce different techniques to my students. I am very excited to implement these strategies with each of my students. My students as well as I need to realize that writing is not just for great authors of books, but we too can become practicing writers when utilizing all the different strategies used by successful authors.
Content-Area Writing
The technique, Drawing and Illustrating, I have used in my classroom. This is the strategy that is used in developing Interactive Notebooks. It helps students in visualizing a picture of what is being taught which I feel helps develop students’ comprehension of any given text. I’ve seen and experienced this first hand with disabled and non-disabled students.
Again, this author has provided me with techniques that I can and will use with my students.
Content Area Writing – pp. 48 - 67 (Second Half of Chapter 3)
Like Claire I hate to draw, because I can’t. I am always amazed at what my students will give me when they have a chance to draw. But because I don’t like to draw, I am bad about not including that many activities that require illustrations. I have done one this year, and it was interesting how much thought my students put into their work. I was out for a professional day, and I left the poem “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost and the Comprehension Corners Worksheet for them to complete. One of the boxes is called “Visualization”, and the students were supposed to draw a picture of the poem in that box. You could tell that they liked that part of the worksheet the best, because many of them had very detailed drawings.
Teaching Adolescent Writers – Chapter 3
I agree wholeheartedly about teachers writing alongside their students. The times that I have done that I have seen a real difference in the quality of the work my students have produced. I have modeled writing a memoir with my students, not yet this year, on a couple of occasions. In doing so, I have shared a significant moment with them, and at the same time, I have shown them that a memoir doesn’t have to be about something huge. Also, it got them to see that even as the teacher my writing is by no means perfect after the first draft, and that even my so-called final draft could be improved. I like the revision strategy on p. 58 where Gallagher talks about writing a sentence on Monday and then revising each day after he has completed a mini-lesson on a specific topic. I also like the surface revision activity on p. 66 to replace the word “said.” This type of activity would help students learn how to use a thesaurus to strengthen their writing. When I do my memoir unit later on this year, these would be two good activities to include. One thing I have done with my resource students the last few years is write a practice HSAP prompt together after they have written this same prompt on their own. I feel like it’s good for them to struggle first on their own, since they will be on their own in April, but at the same time, it is important for me to teach them what to do. Last year I used one of the prompts listed in the appendices of this book. Check out pages 175 – 178 for some great prompts.
I definitely think students need to have writing modeled for them. I think they should have opportunities to continue to improve their writing. I think students need to be taught it is ok to fail. By failing you get better. I like the part of the poem that states "Don't worry about failure. Worry about the chances you miss when you don't even try." I thnk that is so true for some of our studnets. They don't try. I see it in the Sophmore LLC. They will sit there and do nothing instead of giving it a try.
Out of this chapter I liked the STAR strategy. When it comes to writing I think that it is a good approach. You can take each sentence and substitue; take things out; add; or rearrange. I think it becomes easier when you can do this one sentence at a time or paragraph at a time. As a person who struggles with writing I could see using this to improve my writing.
Content Area Writing
This chapter ends with more great strategies. Drawing and Illustrating, Clustering, and Mapping would be great to use with your visual learners. In my science classes I would often use brainstorming. This is great to use before labs and have students brainstorm what they think will happen.
Teaching Adolescent Writers Chapter Three:
Writing has always been something that’s come fairly easily to me, so I’m used to giving my students examples of webs and finished essays to model after. What really got me through reading this section was how often I forget the whole writing process and how much more important the process is than just the finished product. Often, getting my students to write essays in general is a pretty big task. I got myself used to settling for a first draft and a final draft with peer and teacher editing in the middle because I tell myself, “At least they’re writing.” I really liked the STAR, Pimp My Write and Surface Revisions through sentence branching. These strategies will give me a great place to start working more with the process of essays.
We practice behavioral role playing in my room, so I enjoyed the example where the teacher walked across the room and had the students write down her movements. It’s so true; when I practice different situations with the students, they all have multiple solutions. It could very easily be the same way with writing.
Content Area Writing-rest of Chapter 3
I’ve used sketch to stretch a few times in m classroom as well as having them draw an illustration to coincide with vocabulary words so they have something to jog their memories. The one thing I have going for me in using illustrations is that my students will never feel inferior to my drawing abilities (or lack there of I should say.) Everyone usually gets a pretty good joke when I demonstrate my illustration on the board. Usually they spend more time laughing and trying to guess at what I’ve drawn than they do worrying about how good theirs will look. I tell them “It can’t worse than this,” and it seems to make them feel a little more comfortable.
Some of my biggest struggles come with finding multiple ways to explain math topics. The mind map used here for factoring could be very helpful.
It was nice to see the section in there on “What About the Kids Who Seem to Just Have Nothing to write?” That’s something I face pretty regularly, and I agree with what Daniels has written. There isn’t just one solution, but you have to keep trying until you find a way to engage them. Be it discussing with peers or having more one on one time with staff, it’s important to not let that student give up or as a teacher concede to the “This won’t work with my kids” conception.
Content Area-Writing, the rest of Chapter 3
Teaching Adolescent Writers, Chapter 3
First of all, I can’t believe I’m posting after Claire! Second of all, I enjoyed this week’s reading…a lot! The strategies in Content Area-Writing continue to be excellent. I have used drawing/illustrating in my classroom…especially when we’re dealing with more challenging texts. I have found that it often helps those students who are so visual and cannot understand what they’re reading when they’re just staring at the overwhelming words. I’m interested in using clustering in my classroom. I guess I’ve used forms of it, but not in its truest since where the students really spend time making their cluster map grow.
I thoroughly enjoyed the reading in Teaching Adolescent Writers! I love how Gallagher writes,
“After sharing the poem I remind my students that Peter Elbow (1998) once said a person’s best writing is often mixed up with his worst. I tell them it is a requirement in my class to produce a lot of bad writing. From bad writing, I tell them, the seeds of good writing will eventually grow. Bad writing is necessary before good writing emerges.”
After reading this chapter, I’ve set a new goal for myself. I’ve modeled writing for my students this year, but I want to model it the way Gallagher advises me to do. I want to struggle with them. I want them to see me deal with writing and its challenges. And I want us to look at our writing grow and develop into not just good pieces…but really good pieces…pieces to be proud of. I believe that all of the strategies in this chapter, like the STAR strategy and Pimp My Writing strategy are ways to move our school’s writing from the “just barely passing” category. Our students, with just a little extra help, really could be advanced, and even proficient!
As always I enjoyed reading about specific strategies. Of course illustrations and drawings are a big part of how and what I teach. I am constantly drawing diagrams and showing illustrations in my classrooms. Most of the notes my students take are filled with diagrams and drawings. The new textbook has some fantastic illustrations. The publishers includea copies of each picture, diagram, table in electronic form on CD-Rom. They also make sure that they use the same illustrations in the textbook, on worksheets, and in their pre-made PowerPoint presentations. I like that my students see the same diagrams over and over again. I include the same pictures on the test so the students are familiar with these instead of seeing something for the first time.
I have used mapping before as a reading strategy. I gave the students the main idea and the bubbles. They had to fill in the bubbles as they read a section in the textbook. When it was time for us to discuss the chapter together, they would add their notes to the mapping exercise instead of taking regular notes.
I have to model writing constantly when my kids are writing lab responses. Since implementing the no "it" rule, my students struggle sometimes with how to start their sentences. I usually try to give them a couple of ways of how to begin their sentences. Once I explain how to get started, they don't have trouble finishing their responses.
Teaching Adolescent Writers, Chapter 3
Kelly Gallagher
Content-Area Writing, Chapter 3
Harvey Daniels / Zemelman / Steineke
Like many of you, I can not draw, in fact, I hate it and am completely envious of those who can. However, I am creative with printed words and presentation if that makes any sense. Right now we are working with Shakespeare and as you may know, Shakespeare is hard, especially for students. I found one way to help them with such difficulty is to use illustration. After we read an Act I divide the class into groups (groups depend on how many scenes are in that particular Act) and assign them a scene from the Act. They are to re-read that scene and on bulletin paper draw what they see, in effect, creating a story board, (I had some of these displayed in the hallway at one time). Anyways, the point of the story is one, illustration definitely helps visual learners and two, my kids can draw...much better than anything I could ever do!
As far as modeling writing is concerned, I spend a lot of time going over what I expect from my kids when it concerns their writing. I feel good writing is essential and it goes without saying, they hate it. I really like the idea of “Pimp My Write.” I think it is such a great way to motivate them to write and it is something they can relate to. Gallagher makes a great point when he says that for most students, re-writing simply means to recopy or type the paper up. We need to stress the importance that re-writing is not limited to making it “neat,” but instead should focus on taking words out and adding new ones to create a tight structured essay.
Teaching Adolescent Writers
I really try to focus on writing and brainstorming process in class. I had a horrible experience with college writing so I always make sure to tell my students about it. Many of them are surprised that I had the problems that I did. I think it is important to share my experiences with the students so, as Gallagher says, they know that teachers are perfect writers.
While I do focus a lot on the prewriting and writing process, I do not focus as much as I would like on the revision process. Towards the end of the semester, I have enough time set aside that I was planning on really working on analytical writing because, for my students, this seems to be a weak area. I plan on incorporating some to the activities mentioned in chapter three for revision (such as the elimination of "Be" verbs, synonyms for "Said", and limiting dead words. I think these are key strategies that will really help to improve students writing and change them as writers.
Content Area Writing: rest of Chapter 3; Teaching Adolescent Writers: Chapter 3
UGH!! I am last to post again! This time I will blame those darn Twilight books! I cannot leave Edward and Bella’s world long enough to post, or grade, or cook, or even sleep- I know how you feel, Nicole! Anyway, from Content-Area Writing, I have tried several of those strategies. Like Diane, I thought of Jimmy Richardson when I re-read that chapter. I can still see the Jesus picture. If I can remember from 2 years ago, think about that student! I am sure that somewhere, he can remember facts about world religions. I hate to draw as well but the benefits are great, even if you are just drawing a diagram (like an atom). I had my students draw election stuff and most of them did a great job, even the stick figure people like me. Of course, I love clustering and mind maps as well. Timelines are great tools for history classes- facts are re-enforced when placed on the timeline. In Teaching Adolescent Writers, I am, once again, feeling guilty for not doing all that I can do for my students. I harp all the time about being a good model reader for my students. I read, they value reading, they read, they improve reading and writing skills. Why can’t I get my mind around the writing thing too? I did model a think aloud when analyzing political cartoons. I did NOT, however, model the written analysis. If I take the time to model writing, then they will much better writers.
What are you trying to say, Ruth Anne?!?!?! If you had stayed at school before going to see Willy Wonka, Jr., you could have posted yours earlier!! LOL
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